Jean Biegun
Jean Biegun’s poems have been published in numerous journals and anthologies. She has received two Pushcart nominations and written two poetry collections, Hitchhikers to Eden and Edge Effects (2022 and 2024, Kelsay Books). Recent work has appeared in Ariel Chart, As It Ought to Be, Third Wednesday, The Scarred Tree: Poetry on Moral Injury, Ekstasis, Unbroken, and Thin Places and Sacred Spaces: A Poetry Anthology (Amethyst Press). She is retired in California after a lifetime in the Midwest.
Conversion Factor
*Force = mass x acceleration, expressed in units called newtons
After you’ve run so many miles, you can multiply that total by 1.6093
to know your distance in kilometers. The conversion factor (X) is important.
So, when you slap your love (or get slapped by them) with say 2 newtons*
of force, what might be the factor for measuring how long
that act will be remembered?
3.0281 perhaps, if 2F x X = years until they’re gone, you’re gone?
In addition, if a red mark that creates an increase of 10 degrees
in skin temperature is caused by so many newtons, can we say that
length of time = rise in heat x amount of lost love? And, finally,
what might our formula for forgiveness be? Could a total
of 1200 scattered minutes in a musty confessional convert
to healing 3 sq. in. of blue bruise? A drawer of journals, bins
of empty bottles, hot-line calls, therapist bills, lists of gut-cramping
amends—could these add up to cool the hot wound
that traveled in one second through a billion+ cells
and hid someplace deep?
